Archive for the ‘Project Plan’ Category

It was a beautiful, blue-sky California day. The morning fog lifted around mid-morning, leaving a warm, but not too hot, day.

Perfect for documenting our progress at the job site this week.

Putting Down a Deposit on a Nissan LEAF

We had some friends over for dinner, including Mike Calise. Mike is with EVadvise, which is an consultancy firm that focuses on electric vehicles (EV). Mike explained the benefits of electric vehicles to us and, after a bottle of wine (Chardonnay?), we went to the Nissan LEAF web site and put down a deposit to reserve an all-electric Nissan LEAF.

In California, there are special high occupancy vehicle lanes (known as carpool lanes or, as Nik and Kate say, ‘diamond lanes’) that only vehicles with more than a stated number of people can use. In most areas, high occupancy vehicles have two or more people in the vehicle. On most roads, the carpool lanes only allow HOVs from 6:00 am to 9:00 am and from 3:00 pm to 9:00 am.

To promote the adoption of hybrid vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius, the (Great) State of California passed a law allowing a limited number of hybrid vehicles with only the driver in the vehicle to use the carpool lanes regardless of the time of day. These vehicles have yellow stickers, signifying they can be in the carpool lanes at any time. The stickers expire on January 1, 2011 so in only five months there will be 85,000 more vehicles in the non-carpool lanes.

However, the legislators are considering changing the laws to allow all-electric vehicles, such as the Nissan LEAF, to use the carpool lanes.

Considering we missed buying a vehicle with yellow stickers, we certainly want to buy a vehicle that is allowed to use the carpool lanes. This is an opportunity that we simply cannot miss.

Summary

Trenching

Sewer connection inspected and passed, and backfilled

Sewer to garage and South West corner of house completed

Connection to San Jose Water meter completed; inspection by the City of Monte Sereno on Monday afternoon (08/02/10)

Trench from underground cistern to storm sewer connection completed to sidewalk on Winchester

Our PERT chart, showing the remaining items to be completed before we can install the tapered foam roof crickets.

The trench from San Jose Water Company meter to the house was completed, with the white 1-1/4 inch pipe installed. The City of Monte Sereno will inspect this connection on Monday afternoon so we can backfill this trench.

This congested trench area shows the water supply line (white 1-1/4 inch pipe) coming from the San Jose Water meter, and how it will be at least three (3) feet from PG&E

View of North East section of pool, showing completed trench to pool equipment (view unobstructed without the Hollywood Juniper).

North end of South gable, which has been filled in with plywood. Note the electrical conduit for the solar panels needs to be installed at the left side of the lower flat roof.

View of Foyer, from front door, going across the bridge to the Living Room and swimming pool.

View of Foyer and front door opening, from bridge. Note Master Study on the right.

View of Master Suite from gable roof.

View of Master Bedroom with emergency egress window on right. Note the existing 2x4 West wall was increased to a 2x6 wall.

View of Master Closet (right) and Master Vanity (left). The door height will be framed to 86 inches from finished floor (equal to the bottom of the beams).

View of Master Bath. Skylights will be larger to allow more light into the bathrooms. Pony wall by Shower will be reduced in size and replaced with glass wall. Freestanding soaking tub to go under window at left.

West side of lower flat roof. Skylights will be larger and require insulated curbs.

West end of North Gable roof. Fascia needs to be constructed over the end of the SIP roof.

Mid-level flat roof over Living Room at North side of house.

View into Dining Room and Kitchen from North side of East Gable.

East side of East Gable. The gable roof must be extended to the Lower Roof deck and fireblocked every 10 feet.

East Gable, from South East corner of Lower Flat roof over Garage.

West side of East Gable, looking North.

North side of South Gable, looking West.

South Gable, looking East. Note the bottom of the SIP roof must be extended to the Lower Flat Roof deck and fireblocked every 10 feet.

‘I want to see every task from when we move in, going backwards, to today.’— Jo-Anne Sinclair

Jo-Anne wanted to see a PERT chart as Bryan had always prepared such charts when managing large projects. Yes, our renovation and new construction should have such a plan.

And, Jo-Anne then scheduled recurring weekly project review meetings on both of our Outlook calendars, from 8:00 to 8:30 pm every Friday. With no ‘end’ date.

Having thrown down the gauntlet, Bryan responded, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

PERT Charts

While many people create project plans showing timelines, most of the timelines are ‘hard coded’ and do not reflect the predecessor and successor tasks. Using Microsoft Project, one can develop a PERT chart first, showing each task and milestone and have lines showing the relationship to each predecessor and successor task.

PERT, is Program Evaluation and Review Technique. As background, according to Wikipedia,

“PERT was developed primarily to simplify the planning and scheduling of large and complex projects. It was developed by Bill Pocock of Booz Allen Hamilton and Gordon Perhson of the U.S. Navy Special Projects Office in 1957 to support the U.S. Navy’s Polaris nuclear submarine project. It was able to incorporate uncertainty by making it possible to schedule a project while not knowing precisely the details and durations of all the activities.

It is more of an event-oriented technique rather than start- and completion-oriented, and is used more in projects where time, rather than cost, is the major factor. It is applied to very large-scale, one-time, complex, non-routine infrastructure and Research and Development projects.”

Let’s see … Very large-scale, one-time, complex, non-routine infrastructure and Research and Development projects.

Perfect. Bryan set to work on his PC, developing our comprehensive PERT chart.